New Emotions Discovered

“Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.” Marcel Proust

A new UC Berkeley study challenges a long-held assumption in psychology that most human emotions fall within the six universal categories of happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear and disgust. The study suggests that there are rather twenty-seven emotions rather than six. See the interactive map showing clusters of emotions.

For me, the interesting thing in this study is not the various new emotions discovered.

Rather, it is the arrival at the number twenty-seven emotions discovered as the defining number.

The article is appearing soon in a number of prestigious science and medical publications.

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As usual, those invisible numbers that no one ever sees, define the modern landscape perhaps more than anything else. The culture is so hypnotized to focus on content and feel that numbers are only devices for measuring rather than ways of defining.

Yet, I would argue that numbers are far more than this. For one thing, they have created our digital culture. And, they are creating a new artificial culture within this digital culture.

The new world is already here for those involved in video games.

Numbers regulate our lives, the cycles of our lives, our culture, our collective aspirations and consciousness as a culture at a moment in time.

These unseen mediums of numbers are controlling all aspects of communication today.

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Interestingly, in the new paper suggesting twenty-seven emotions has a relationship to a popular app for smart phone communication. It is that little yellow emoji face one can click to make a particular type of face appear. Emojis have been growing in the past few years from the old Happy Face or Sad Face options culture had not too long ago. Now, there are many options for one to express moods to another over the Internet via these modern (quick reference) symbols. Is there any relationship between the growing number of expressions in Emojis and a growing number of emotions in culture?

It comes into the world, a simple little announcement like this, yet is the structure for a new form of psychological paradigm being put into place. Piece by piece. Perhaps this research is one of the first shots into the old psychological establishment, or the owner (brand steward) of the idea that there are six great human emotions. Does the the idea of twenty-seven rather than six emotions presents the idea for a grand shift in psychology?

Will this report serve as some new type of paradigm defining a new type of psychology?